Will An Optimized Website Help My Conversion Rate?

Some people may try to tell you that search engine
optimization and website design have two different goals.
This is patently untrue.

Every site on the Web is designed for a purpose.
For social sites, this purpose is to keep people talking,
coming back, and recommending their services. For blogs, the
purpose is to engage readers and other curious minds in an ongoing
conversation. For commerce sites, the purpose is to get
people to pull the trigger and actually buy something.

Notice the common word in all those sentences? People.
Every website on the planet is designed to do something with their visitors, and SEO is the most effective way to get
people in the door.

But what happens once they have crossed the threshold?
This, alas, is where many optimizers fall short.
What good is it to double your traffic if everyone turns tail the
moment they arrive? Conversion is the art of closing the deal.

Find Better Traffic

There are two ways to fix this problem. The
first is better design. A great layout and a clean aesthetic can go a
long way toward holding onto your visitors, piquing their curiosity,
and turning them into customers. The key is to engender trust with great content, a
professional look, and plenty of resources on hand. The Web
is anonymous enough as it is without making people guess what you're
selling, how it works, and what you stand for. The more trust
you can build into your design from the beginning, the better your site
will perform at earning links and loyalty.

But what about the simple question of attracting the right
kind of people? I don't mean folks in ascots and wingtips
here, I mean the people who are specifically looking for what you sell.
Effective SEO can improve your conversion rate tremendously
simply by optimizing toward the proper demographics.

Targeted traffic is an unending treasure trove of
valuable leads. Say you sell hand-printed t-shirts.
If your site is just generally targeting the word "shirts"
with no specific optimization, you will attract tons of visitors who
are looking for something else — Oxford shirts, athletic shirts, the
rules to shirts vs. skins. But when you optimize your copy toward
specific keywords such as "hand-printed t-shirts" or "custom t-shirt designs,"
you will notice that your conversion rate skyrockets — as does your
customer satisfaction.

Close the Deal

There are countless steps that go into conversion: create a
terrific first impression, engender trust, guide your
customer through the process conveniently, and offer killer
incentives to hit that "Buy" button. But it all starts with plucking your perfect customer from a vast sea of Web surfers.